Wednesday, July 7, 2010

My daughter's daughter

My daughters daughter.

I am a grandmother now. Wow. It was an amazing thing to watch my daughter give birth. Cami is amazing. She was calm and in control. She was so prepared to give birth that when I got there only about an hour before the birth I could not tell by looking at her at what stage or how hard labor was for her. I was thinking it might be a long while before she had this baby. When the nurse midwife came in and measured her though she was at 9 cm. A nurse stayed with her the entire time after that and they hooked her up to the fetal heart monitor. Only one time they both came in and seemed to be a little insistent about that. I guess because Cami was laying on her side the monitor wasn’t getting a consistent reading. They were telling us in pretty polite terms that they weren’t ok with the way things were going. So, to let them know we weren’t trying to be difficult, I asked “what do you need?” And all they needed was for Cami to roll a little more toward her back. She did and they started to monitor the baby and seemed happy about it.
The Nurse midwife, Cheryl, was getting all the delivery things ready. Cami started pushing with the contractions. To me it seemed at first a pretty long process to get the baby engaged into the birth canal. Then, I watched Carli crown and the head didn’t recede any more into the birth canal but stayed put. Finally the nurse midwife told Cami to keep it coming and that cued Cami into pushing more to get Carli out until she was told not to push so they could check the cord. (No cord around the neck.) Moments later she was born, sniffed,and placed on Cami’s belly so she could rub her all up and down and make her turn from the blue to pink. 6 pounds and 12 ounces. 8:36 am and 19 inches long. She is so tiny. I never had a baby so little. She looks like a Strasser. She has the cute little chin and lips and her ears are little and flat against her head.
After she was born and pinked up the nurse took her and they put her under the light to warm her up. I was surprised at how they didn’t clean her up very well, but still didn’t really let Cami hold her. That was probably because Cami was stitched up. I am very skeptical about Cami needing stitches. Carli was so cone headed and I never saw anything that looked like it would cause tearing. The nurse midwife said it wasn’t bad, but bad enough to need a few stitches. I hope she didn’t do it just to get a few more dollars out of the event. Even after the stitches they made Cami wait a bit to hold Carli saying she needed to get warm first and wrapped her up in three blankets before giving her to Cami. I was surprised that they didn’t sniff out more fluids from her when they took her from Cami.

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